


all of your scars are looking more like scales

by wordorb



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Asexual Character, Character Study, Dragonkin Jon Sims, M/M, Monster Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Not Beta Read, Otherkin, Season/Series 05 Spoilers, Very mild body horror, being a monster and being otherkin aren't presented as the same thing btw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:02:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28215900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordorb/pseuds/wordorb
Summary: He asks Elias if he’s still human. Elias smiles like they’re both in on a joke.Otherkin: 'A person who identifies wholly or partially as non-human.'
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 17
Kudos: 41





	all of your scars are looking more like scales

**Author's Note:**

> Quick disclaimer: The experiences in this fic are partially inspired by dragonkin I know, but are mostly my own fictional ideas about how the Fears might interact with nonhuman identities in the tma-verse. Every person who is otherkin has different experiences and some of Jon's are completely fictional. Please don't treat this as a kin 101 guide.
> 
> And a quick warning: Jon has a lot of negative thoughts about his draconity in the earlier part of this fic.
> 
> Title is based on the song 'Monster' by Dodie.

Jon knows he’s human. He also, simultaneously, knows he is not. He can’t articulate this yet when he’s seven years old and in trouble for growling at people on the playground. Again. The teacher on duty sighs, and invites him to sit next to her on a bench for the rest of the break. She talks to him for a little while, and Jon does his best to sound like a grownup. He hates being treated like a little kid. His tail flicks in irritation.

Jon, with some difficulty, makes a friend. She lets him borrow a book about dragons with index and _everything_ , and something just _clicks_. When they play dragons, she compliments Jon’s roar and it makes him grin with all the fangs in his long snout.

When he tries to explain that he has real dragon wings that he can feel and sometimes even move, Jon’s new friend calls him a liar, says he’s not a dragon and that’s _stupid_. Jon tries to roar at her, fat tears rolling down his face, but all that comes out is a strangled yell. When Jon sees her next week, she’s playing a new game with some other kid on the playground. He shoots her a glare. He doesn't need her anyway, it's autumn and he'd _much_ rather find the perfect conkers for his hoard.

After Mr Spider, Jon feels very human for a long time. He spends more time inside with his Grandmother, silently wishing he had real scales instead of skin so that the sensation of something scuttling across his shoulders would go away. At night, he sits in his room with the bedside light on for hours, unable to shake the feeling that this is all, somehow, his fault.

-

He’s fifteen years old and riding his bike home from town. It’s a windy day, a constantly moving layer of clouds mottling the sky. The wind is behind him and he stretches out wings that aren’t there and _flies_.

He’s long since stopped growling and running on all fours - he is, after all, in upper school now, and doesn’t need to add more reasons to be picked on. He knows he should have grown out of thinking he's a dragon, knows anyone he told would think he was being stupid and childish. And yet as the wind rushes past him, he envisions himself as a lithe, scaled beast, flying high enough to see the whole of Bournemouth stretched out below him, and it feels right.

-

Jon, apparently, is done growing by the time he’s eighteen. At times it’s infuriating, being so small when some part of his brain tells him he should be powerful and strong. He’s not sure if this is because of his dragon... _thing_ , or if he’s developing some kind of Napoleon Complex. He’s honestly not sure which would be more embarrassing. He’s doing his A Levels for Christ’s sake - he’s got an offer for _Oxford University!_

He glances at the shaky drawing of a green-scaled dragon tucked away on his desk. He should probably throw it away. He’s legally an adult now. The paper is fuzzy along the edges from age. He sighs, and places it safely back inside the draw. 

-

Overwhelmed with work and an entirely new set of people to avoid socialising with, Jon doesn’t think much about the stranger parts of his identity much at university, but they don’t quite go away either. Something about his human body still feels off somehow. When he stands in the smoking area in the January cold, he breathes cigarette smoke out of his nostrils. 

He’s twenty one and using one of the university library's computers when he stumbles across the word _otherkin_. Two hours later, it's dark outside and he’s pages deep in forums of people explaining that they don’t see themselves as human. He lets out a breath that he didn't know he'd been holding. 

Georgie is Jon’s first serious relationship after a lifetime of thinking that perhaps he just didn’t like anybody after all. Sometimes he catches himself almost purring when they’re lying squished together on a single bed in one of their rooms. He doesn’t tell her about his discovery when he comes back from the library. He wouldn’t know how to say _Sometimes I feel like I’m a dragon and there’s a_ word _for it, I’m not crazy_. When she asks him what’s up, he just shrugs and says he’s worn out from studying. 

In that first year, Jon absorbs as much information on the phenomena as he can. It’s difficult with a community so decentralised and with so much variety, but he finds himself eschewing coursework to read up on terminology, history and personal accounts time and time again.

He dips in and out of various forums and yahoo groups in the years that follow. Most of the time he just lurks. Sometimes he participates in heated discussions, frustrated by the spiritual language a lot of the community uses. After his own… encounter with the supernatural, it’s not something he likes to think about much. No, he firmly believes that his own identity is rooted in some quirk of the brain, nothing more. 

Having a word for his experiences helps him to think of his nonhuman side as just another facet of himself. It helps him to feel okay about it. As he gets older the wings he sometimes feels on his back are no less vivid, nor are less human mental states he slips into, but that these _shifts_ \- as the community calls them - have simply become mundane with time. He barely pays attention to the phantom feeling of clawed feet that makes him stand on the balls of his toes as he makes breakfast in his flat.

-

By the time Jon’s been working in the research department at the Magnus Institute for a year, Tim jokes frequently about how Jon’s basically just a grumpy cat. Jon rolls his eyes and pushes down the spark of joy he feels at that. He doesn’t see himself as a cat in the same way he does dragons, but he’s always felt a certain solidarity with them. For Christmas that year Tim buys him a mug with a particularly angry looking feline wearing a tie saying _‘Can I haz payrise plz?’_ It is absolutely hideous, and Jon drinks out of it every single day.

There is a tiny kitchenette in the basement of the Institute which functions as a sort of break room for the Artefact Storage and Archive staff. On his very first day as Head Archivist, Jon puts his cat mug safely on the shelf in the cupboard above the plastic kettle. As he sorts through boxes hours after his new assistants have left for the day, he thinks - only half-joking - about how the piles of old statements could be considered his draconic ‘hoard’. He chuckles dryly to himself, but the sound fizzles out when he looks over his shoulder, feeling suddenly very aware that someone could be watching him.

Organising the archives is… difficult. Still, Jon can’t help but feel a stab of pride every time he takes a moment to appreciate how much better it was then when he'd first got the job, even after only a few weeks. 

-

In the aftermath of Gertrude’s death, Jon’s paranoia is overwhelming. He is constantly looking over his shoulder, feeling hackles raised along his back. He even nearly _snarls_ at people a few times, just barely catching himself from returning to a defence tactic which never helped him much as a child and _certainly_ won’t help him as an adult. He explores the tunnels, phantom tail flicking anxiously back and forth as he moves deeper underground. Every noise makes him jump and snap his teeth.

Jon has nightmares about Leitner’s body every night for the first week he's hiding out at Georgie's. The sleep deprivation only worsens the constant gnawing feeling of dissatisfaction at being away from the archives. He paces around the house, holding back quiet growls and bored out of his mind. The Admiral watches him with mild disinterest, until eventually he weaves his way between Jon’s legs to demand fuss. Unable to deny the cat anything, Jon bends down to scratch at the soft fur behind his ears with blunt, bitten nails. 

He knows that he shouldn’t read the mysterious statements that arrive, knows that he _definitely_ shouldn’t keep them. And yet the thought of throwing them away makes him feel physically nauseous. When he feels that awful tug to go back to the institute, the small stack of paper feels like the only solace he has. 

-

The difference between predator and prey animal identities is one that came up infrequently but more than once in the forums Jon hasn’t frequented since he became Head Archivist. A handful of the statements he reads about pursuing or feeling pursued remind him of these conversations - not that he’s ever mentioned it in his recordings, of course. 

Daisy has him by the throat. He is paralysed, muscles frozen in fear and unable to do anything other than babble fearfully. She snarls back at him, pressing the knife to his throat. He thinks he truly understands for the first time what it is like to be prey.

The realisation that he has been fundamentally _changed_ somehow isn't sudden, but one that creeps up on Jon in inches. He asks Elias if he’s still human. Elias smiles like they’re both in on a joke, and Jon is hit by the horrible certainty that Elias has known about the parts of himself he has never spoken aloud since Jon arrived for his very first interview. Like a true bureaucrat, he answers Jon with a question: _What does human even mean?_

Jon thinks about that question more than he cares to admit. It starts to feel like the carefully drawn line between his human and inhuman side was never there to begin with. It all feels secondary to whatever he’s becoming now. Is there a difference between the phantom feelings of scales on his body and the phantom feeling of bugs crawling over him from a statement? When he imagines himself in his purest form, he sees something curled up and purring in a cave of treasure and books and _knowledge_. 

-

Nikola Orsinov gets bored sometimes, and when she does, she tells Jon anecdotes. Jon listens because there isn’t much else to do when you’re tied to a chair. One such tale is about a woman who would avoid mirrors at all costs, because if she looked then what she saw wouldn’t _fit_ right. Being human wasn’t right for her, Orsinov explains, but that’s okay because after the Circus was done with her, she certainly wasn’t anymore. The mannequin’s borrowed eyelid winks at him knowingly. Jon swallows.

That hunger only gets sharper the more time he spends away from the institute searching for a way to stop the Unknowing. Even the visits to Usher and Pu Songling can’t sate the ache in his belly for long. He _needs_ statements. He’s wasting away without them, literally. Despite that, when Elias sends him one to _tide him over_ , his phantom tail still flicks in irritation. 

-

After the Unknowing - after he was dead - Jon doesn’t feel much different. He knows - or perhaps _Knows -_ that he has crossed a line that he can’t come back from, but he's been at the edge for so long that perhaps taking that final step barely feels like a change at all. 

He knows that even if he is not a monster, then that it is at least _monstrous_ to take statements from living strangers. He knows that it should be a good thing that Basira, Melanie and Daisy stop him from taking them. And despite this, Jon can’t help but feel a snarling ache of hunger and vicious dissatisfaction just below the surface at being... _deprived_.

The Lonely reminds him of childhood years walking along the beach in February. Everything is damp, cold and tastes of salt, and the _emptiness_ of it all is nearly overwhelming. When he Looks at Peter Lukas, a pale shell of a man, and he _pushes,_ Jon feels his muzzle curl into a snarl. 

And then he finds Martin. _Really_ finds him. Jon places a hand on each of his cold cheeks as Martin lets out a sob. Jon reflexively curls wings that aren’t there around him and holds his hand tight until long after they’ve escaped the fog. 

Their life in Scotland isn’t perfect; Jon still feels that monstrous hunger, but he has statements to read and it’s easier to ignore when he isn’t surrounded by strangers whose statements he could take. In turn Martin finds the cold, foggy mornings especially difficult, some days even refusing to let Jon out of his sight until the sun burns through the clouds.

Being physically affectionate doesn’t come naturally for Jon in a lot of ways. He’s never fully unpacked if it’s an asexuality thing or just a _him_ thing, but either way Martin seems to understand that Jon’s tendency to gently brush his forehead against him, or just sitting pressed against his side reading something on the sofa is Jon’s way of offering reassurance. Martin jokes that he’s like a cat, and Jon smiles and tries not to be reminded of Tim.

They muddle through.

-

Elias - _Jonah_ \- explains he hadn’t initially thought much of Jon’s particular quirk, except that Jon’s instinct to covet might aid him in his role as Archivist. Jon can feel his smugness as he reads Jonah’s triumphant _and I was right_.

The Change is electrifying. The air around Jon cracks with Power and the sensation of static in his mouth feels like it might turn to sparks at any moment.

He Sees, _really_ Sees, for what feels like the first time. The Eye that was once the Sun is Jon’s own, dilating between a slit and blown so wide that its iris almost disappears. He - The Eye - all it sees is chaos, people panicking and screaming and then -

The Eye blinks and just like that, reality is reordered. Each entity with their own domains. Later, he explains the oddly organised apocalypse to Martin with a wry comment about it being easier to browse when your channels aren’t one big mess of avatar turf wars.

He holds Martin’s hand as they walk through domain after domain, Witnessing terror after terror. He sees the fear and suffering of all things and the guilt he feels is more because of how easy it would be to relish in it rather than in the hurt that he's caused the world around them. He tries not to let this on to Martin. Terrified, righteous, loving Martin. 

The Eye, in its own twisted way, takes care of its own. For Martin, this has manifested in the ability to remain almost untouched when the rest of the world has been reduced to husks of fear.

For Jon, the opposite is true. In this world, his teeth have become sharp and the skin around his slit-pupiled eyes flakes off to reveal more and more golden scales whenever he scratches at it. The irony that after all his years of arguing _no, otherkin cannot shapeshift and no, we don't believe we can,_ he'd end up like this isn't lost on him. 

Martin is a mix of concerned and confused, of course. Jon explains that it’s a gift from the Eye. Scales are more durable than mere skin after all, and the eye has no need to see its Archivist marked further. It’s not a _lie_ , except maybe by omission. There’s nothing to be gained but worry from telling Martin about the thrill he feels at his altered appearance. Much like how through Jonah’s first ritual, the Eye had granted him the ability to escape death, Jon has received a reward for the apocalypse he has unknowingly brought about. The guilt he feels rings hollow. He can’t shake the sense of rightness he feels when he glimpses his reflection even when he knows he should be horrified.

That, and there’s also the fact that he’d never brought up his identity to Martin before. He’d thought about it, of course but the moment had never come up and throwing him another curveball after the literal apocalypse would just feel like taking the piss a bit. 

He feels the ghost of a long, scaled tail wrap around Martin protectively as they rest between domains. After a moment, Martin clambers to his feet, wincing at how stiff his knees are. Jon offers him a hand, which he takes.

Jon’s Eyes, as if pulled by magnetic force, drift to the Tower looming in the distance. Martin squeezes his hand, an attempt to either reassure himself or Jon. They walk on. The Tower watches Jon back. He blinks at it, feeling his new third eyelids closing.

He tries not to feel like he’s going home.

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't in the otherkin community at the time Jon discovers it in the early 2000s, but I gather it was pretty forum based at the time. 
> 
> Spirituality is normally more prominent in the community, but I felt like Jon would see his experiences as purely psychological in origin. Also, I see him as being a pretty cat-like dragon which... may or may not be inspired by all the catboy Jon content. You can't prove anything. /hj
> 
> Anyways, sorry if this fic doesn't make sense to non-kin, but I hope you got something out of it. This is my first TMA fic and I know it’s kinda out there, so please be gentle in the comments :,)
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
